Wallerville, Wisconsin

Driving into Chippewa Falls from the west is not an entirely scenic route.  Oh, the Chippewa River is pretty.  But you'll also go by the sewage treatment plant, a rails to trucks transfer station....and a humble community of smallish houses near the train tracks.  Those with a bit of local history knowledge refer to it as "Irvine".  But that's not its original name.

Welcome to Wallerville.

It got its name from an early resident, the Reverend Thomas Waller who lived there.  He came to town in the early 1870's, and after working for a lumber company and in "..the old Sheldon store.." served in a variety of area churches as a Presbyterian minister.  Presumably he got his land on this site for cheap, as it was outside of the city proper and a bit close to the flood plain.  It proved a good investment when the railroad set up a switching yard and other facilities on the site in the early to mid 1880's.

If what you find in the local papers is a reasonable guide, 1887 was the year Wallerville took off.  There are frequent mentions of new homes being built, a boarding house being in operation, a hotel and store being under consideration.  This map from 1888 shows many of these structures in place, along with the tracks, telegraph office and round house of the Wisconsin Central.

It's often the little touches that make history interesting.  In 1887 there was a Rail Road Man's picnic in which the "Baby Contest" was won by a Wallerville family.  In fact, there is either a strong hint or a bit of a joke that the baby girl was actually named Wallerville!  Down by the river must have been a nice place to grow up in the latter part of the 19th century.  There was a Wallerville School someplace in the community.  The newspaper felt it newsworthy when a group of local lads brought in a fine specimen of snapping turtle from one of the periodic floods of the low lying suburb.  

But like all communities down by the tracks it had its seedy side.  I read one spirited account of the pursuit of a peeping Tom, and note that in 1897 a special patrolman was added primarily to keep a closer eye on Wallerville.  I also happen to know that to get to Wallerville you had to drive past the City Dump.

So when did it become Irvine?  Well that depends on your perspective.  The newspaper tended to use the older name into the early years of the new Century, while maps as late as 1920 still have it as Wallerville.  This likely is because that was, and in fact still is, the legal name of the Addition.  But by the summer of 1888 the Railroad had already changed the name of the station to Irvine, presumably in honor of William Irvine, local upstanding citizen and benefactor.

Wallerville grew rapidly but not for long.  The streets seen in the 1888 map are all that there ever were, and it does not seem as if all of the lots were ever actually on.  But it is still a residential neighborhood, albeit not a particularly swank one.

And what of Reverend Waller?  He's hard to bring into focus.  He was married and had several children.  His employment seems spotty, he'd fill in at various congregations that had a vacancy but does not seem to have stayed long at any of them.  He was to some extent involved in the business side of the community that bore his name.  The early lots were purchased from him and he took on such jobs as the contract to install street lights.  At one point he petitioned the City Council to make his properties tax free as they were part of his religious calling.

Around 1903 he left the area, doing "missionary work" in the West.  While out there he fell ill with "paralysis of the brain due to hard work" and was hospitalized at the Wisconsin State Insane Asylum in Mendota.  Sadly he did not improve and died there, age 63, in 1910.

Although his obituary says the usual nice things about the man he merits little to no mention in local histories.  But he did leave one small, peculiar legacy in the quiet little community that once bore his name.  Did you notice the street names?  Ludgate, Regent, Fleet, Oxford.  These should sound familiar.  They are all famous streets - and in the case of Ludgate, a hill - in London England, where Reverend Thomas Waller was born in 1847.